Javier Gutiérrez, CEO for the North American highway I-66, recently participated in a panel on Programs for Regional Roads, part of the 5th Annual Forum on PPPs held by the George Mason University Center for Transportation.
. Other civil servants from Maryland also participated on the same panel, discussing their interest in the public-private collaboration system to solve traffic problems on highways I-495 and I-270.
This was one of the most popular panels among those who attended the workshop due to the fact that the metropolitan area of Washington, DC has some of the worst traffic in the United States.
There were also other debates at the workshop on different subjects such as new models to deliver public-private collaboration contracts, perspectives on policies and the national market, and on how to tackle smart mobility through PPP programs.
Among those present at this forum, the presence of the U.S. Department of Transportation, the World Bank’s Railway Development Project, and Washington, DC’s Department of Transportation were of particular note.
The I-66 project Outside the Beltway is one of the infrastructures with the most traffic in the Washington area. Currently, around 200,000 vehicles use this highway every day, with heavy traffic for 8 to 10 hours. Known as Transform66 Outside the Beltway, construction started in 2018 throughout the 35-kilometer corridor, and it will be completed by the end of 2022. The project has two managed lanes in each direction and three general lanes, as well as 4,000 parking spaces, with expanded transit and shared use for the cyclist-pedestrian network.
